The Beloved

by Gonzalez, J. F.

  “What happened then?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Nothing. I came home.”

  Elizabeth rubbed Eric’s shoulders, then turned back to stacking the dishwasher.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Can Mary start coming over here instead?”

  “Of course. In fact, I insist on it.” It would mean having to drive over to Reinholds to pick the girl up and drive her back because she knew damn well Diana probably wouldn’t do it, but she felt better about having Mary and Eric play at her house.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Elizabeth closed the door to the dishwasher, threw back the lock, pressed the button to start it. It began to hum, the sound of rushing water filling up as it began its first cycle. “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t know.”

  RONNIE BAKER LAY on his back in the king-sized waterbed naked as Diana showered after their bout of lovemaking.

  Ronnie lit a cigarette, drew the smoke deep into his lungs. It was late—just after two a.m., and he’d gotten home early from work. His normal shift was three-thirty to midnight, but he always put in at least two hours of overtime. Tonight he’d skipped out of the overtime and come home. He’d worked overtime for the past month. Time for a little R&R.

  The light in the bedroom was low, and the rest of the house was silent. Rick had been watching The Blair Witch Project on the TV in the living room when Ronnie came home and Lily had been up with him, staring at the TV with a kind of hollow-eyed vacant look, her face puffy with fatigue. Diana had been sitting at the computer desk browsing through some web page and he’d shut the front door, making sure the lock engaged, and then crossed the living room to Diana. He’d kissed her, ruffling her hair. “How’s it going, hon?”

  “Okay,” Diana had said, eyes riveted to the screen. “How was your day?”

  “Fine.” Ronnie looked around the house, at the living room, dining room, the kitchen. “Where’s Mary?”

  “She went to bed a couple hours ago,” Diana said.

  Ronnie had nodded, then headed back to their bedroom to shower.

  Diana had joined him thirty minutes later and he figured she’d sent her kids to bed because she’d fucked him with a sense of ferocity he’d never seen in her, even in the nine months or so they’d been together. She’d rode him hard, driving him into her, her hands tugging at his hair as she bounced on him and she’d kept him hard and inside her for what seemed like hours. When she’d finally rolled off him and headed to the shower, Ronnie stole a glance at the clock on the nightstand on his side of the bed and saw that only an hour had passed. Damn, but she was hot tonight! What got into her?

  Ronnie smoked, feeling that relaxed sense of pleasure he always felt after sex. This was why he had gone through all this hell—the arguing with his parents about moving Diana and her kids out, getting a new house built, moving in, the overtime—it was all done so he could have some sense of normalcy. So he could provide a sense of comfort and a home to Diana and her kids and Mary. He wanted a family, wanted Mary to grow up knowing what it was like to have a mom and dad around. She didn’t know what that was like; Cindy left when she was only three, and while Mary saw her mother regularly and had spent evenings over at her and Gary’s apartment until just recently, it was hardly a traditional family situation. Ronnie felt bad that Mary had to be shuttled back and forth like that. She was seven now and it was all she knew. What kind of life was that? That wasn’t what he remembered growing up; he wanted Mary to live in a stable environment, with a mother and father in the home. He didn’t want to raise his daughter alone.

  That was something his father didn’t understand. His mother was a little more accommodating and open-minded. But dad...he was ramrod straight conservative and he didn’t like Diana one bit. Ronnie could tell. When his parents came over they looked normal enough, but Ronnie could detect his dad wasn’t too happy. In fact, he appeared downright disgusted. Ronnie didn’t give a shit. Far as he was concerned, his dad could fuck off. What mattered was Ronnie had found a woman who loved him and whom he loved, and she had moved three hundred miles just to be with him. Now that was love!

  Meeting Diana had really proved to be a turning point for him. A year ago he’d been living at mom and dad’s, drifting aimlessly in his personal life and trying his best to raise Mary on his own and share custody with Cindy. He’d waited two years for Cindy to come back and when she showed no signs of making any efforts at rekindling the relationship, he’d quietly filed for divorce. He’d messed around with other women between Cindy and Diana—but not like he’d used to when he was single and fifty pounds lighter. Ronnie rubbed the spare tire that had grown around his mid-section. He used to be in great shape; tight muscles, well defined abs. He used to work out. Not any more. No time for working out now. The only workout he ever got these days was in bed with Diana.

  Ronnie grinned. He’d never thought he’d meet somebody over the Internet. He’d met Diana on an adult matchmaker website. He’d bought the computer; a Pentium III with 1.5 GHZ of speed and a 40 Gig hard drive, a few months before and become obsessed with learning everything he could about it. He’d discovered the Internet, and the first thing he had typed in a search engine was ‘sex’. He’d spent weeks perusing various sites, spending about a third of that on the various adult and pornography sites. And through his web wanderings he’d come across various matchmaking sites. Most of them were fee based, which he steered clear of. All of them, however, contained tantalizing personal ads. Hi, my name’s Tina! I’m thirty-two, single, and looking for a casual sex partner. You must be clean, professional, HIV negative and be prepared to prove it with a certified test result, and in good physical shape. The accompanying photo would show a woman, sometimes nude or semi-nude, and most of the time the women were average looking. Some of them were real hotties though, and he wondered why they felt the need to advertise for a bedmate on an Internet site.

  Of all the sites he went to he was drawn to one in particular—Friend Finders for Adults. It was free to peruse ads; all one had to do to view bios and photographs were sign up for the Age Verification service by punching in a credit card number and you were in. The only time your credit card was charged was if you answered an ad or placed one. And it was only $19.95 a week to place an ad! Because he felt it wouldn’t hurt to at least look, Ronnie spent most of his time perusing the ads and photos on Friend Finders for Adults, spending more time on the ads from women who were only interested in sex (and some of those photos were quite explicit—one, from a young Chinese-American college student showed a close up of her smiling face as she clutched an erect penis and Ronnie had almost been tempted to respond to her).

  One evening, bored after a night of work, he’d been perusing the Friend Finders for Adults classifieds when Diana’s ad popped up out of nowhere.

  It hadn’t been there before, and he didn’t know how he’d missed it because he was pretty sure he’d cruised through all of them at least once that evening. But there it was and it showed Diana in all her naked glory, smiling at the camera, legs spread. Her ad was simple: I know I can excite you. I will be the best fuck you’ve ever had. I love anal sex, S&M, giving blowjobs, and I swallow. Write to me and I’ll be your whore. Will travel anywhere. Ronnie had clicked immediately on the Contact This Person link, filled in the appropriate fields, and hit the Send button. He didn’t know what it was about her that had compelled him to act so compulsively, but there was just something about her. She represented everything he fantasized in a woman, creamy complexion, dark hair, curvy figure, full breasts, flat stomach, long shapely legs. She was perfect.

  Diana had responded immediately, asking for a picture. Ronnie had an electronic file of one he had scanned a few days before from a family picnic, and he’d sent it to her. She’d responded immediately again, and that started a two-week correspondence where they simply traded information: past lives, their jobs, and marital st
atus. Diana told him her husband had left her suddenly, that she lived in Columbus with her two kids, that she was devoted to raising her kids but she just needed to let loose every once in a while and that’s what had led her to place such a daring ad. What Ronnie found in the two weeks he spent corresponding with her was a woman with a tender soul, a traditionalist at heart who had gone temporarily wild when she’d placed that ad.

  He had to meet her.

  She’d invited him out to Ohio, set him up in a hotel near her home. He’d driven out one weekend and called her when he arrived. They’d met at a bar down the street from the hotel, and seeing her in the flesh swept him away. She was more beautiful in person than she was in the photo, and as they sat in the smoky booth at the bar talking, feeling awkward, Ronnie knew he was falling for her. He could sense she was falling for him as well, and it was inevitable they ended up back at his hotel room in bed.

  And the sex...God, the sex!

  Ronnie finished his cigarette, stubbed out the butt in the ashtray. The sex with Diana was incredible. He’d never been with a women who could keep him hard all night the way Diana did. She seemed to draw something out of him, something that kept his appetite for sex with her insatiable. When they were together it seemed that all he wanted to do was make love to her, and Diana was always willing to comply. Her appetite for sex equaled, if not out-rivaled, his own. She was a dream come true.

  He’d spent that entire weekend in bed with Diana, and the following week he’d been ragged and tired and sore. She’d further tantalized him with provocative e-mails, complete with jpeg attachments of herself nude. That kept the fires stoked and he quickly arranged to see her two weeks later. That’s when mom found out—no big deal there. But when he wanted to go out to see her again the following weekend mom said, “What about Mary, Ronnie? You’ve already gone out to Ohio last week to see Diana. Can’t you spend the weekend with Mary instead?”

  He’d grown a little annoyed at this, but quickly agreed. He called Diana to apologize for not coming out and she understood. “I like a man who understands the importance of his children,” she said in that seductive purr. “That’s just so sexy.”

  The following week she drove out from Ohio to visit him. Ronnie had been surprised at the visit, and immediately ushered Diana into the room he shared with Mary, where they spent the rest of the night making love. It was only until she left Sunday morning he realized he had neglected Mary all weekend; she’d even slept on the sofa in the living room. He apologized to her profusely, but then had to dash off to work. He spent the next few days feeling guilty about throwing Mary out of their room like that, and went out to Toys R Us one afternoon to buy her a doll to cheer her up. That had seemed to do the trick, and she forgot about the incident. Unfortunately, mom and dad hadn’t.

  He could tell Mom was pissed off, but she didn’t say anything about it. His dad was furious as well, and it was a good thing their paths never crossed during the day, otherwise there would have been heated words over it. Ronnie kept his head down and blazed through the rest of the week, continued his relationship with Diana long distance, and after a few more months and some more trips and visits they’d decided to move in together.

  It was a natural decision. He felt close to Diana whenever he was with her. She understood him; she loved him, and she was great in bed, simply the best lover he’d ever had. She never complained about anything, and she didn’t tell him what to do. When he talked to her about raising Mary, she listened, offering advice at just the right time (“a young girl needs a mother figure, Ronnie, and Cindy surely isn’t providing that for her. I hope she’ll soon think of me as her mother.”). She sympathized with his situation (“I know what it’s like to live with your parents. That’s why when you come out to see me I have you stay in a hotel and I sleep with you there. You don’t want to see my parent’s place or meet them. Trust me. Your situation is paradise compared to mine.”).

  He understood her as well; they shared the same interests in NASCAR and rock and roll, and the same tastes in beer and cigarettes. Diana had a similar philosophy as Ronnie when it came to raising their kids (“I let them pretty much do what they want to do as long as they don’t hurt themselves. This lets them learn on their own terms, teaches them lessons.”). It was slightly different from Ronnie’s own approach to raising Mary, which was to basically be there to guide her, but he understood where Diana was coming from. Soon they were talking about moving in together with both sets of kids. The more they talked about it, the more Ronnie began to be sold on the idea and then right after Christmas, when they’d been seeing each other for six months, he felt compelled to go out and buy her the ring.

  Mom had been pissed; he could tell, but she’d never voiced her feelings. And Ronnie went out and had a house built from scratch instead of renting a place. “We need a place that is totally our own,” Diana said during one of the many marathon phone sessions they had in the months leading up to her quitting her job and moving out. “We need to be in a new development, in a new house. We’re both starting over, Ronnie. Building this house will be a representation of that.”

  And now she was here.

  The shower had stopped a few minutes ago, and he could hear her drying off in the bathroom. When she entered the bedroom she was a smoky silhouette, a large towel wrapped around her body, another towel wrapped in her hair. She sat on her edge of the bed and began drying her hair. Ronnie reached out and touched her. “I love you,” he said. The impulse to tell her he loved her came suddenly; this happened a lot now. He’d never had such intense feelings for somebody before, and he was always expressing his love for her through touching her, telling her he loved her, doing everything he could to help her and her kids. Sometimes he felt that wasn’t enough, though, so he told her.

  She smiled, drying her hair. “I love you too, babe.”

  Ronnie settled back in the pillows feeling contented, at peace, yet tired. Diana slipped the towel off her body and joined him in bed, snuggling next to him. And as he drifted to sleep, Diana pressed up against him, he thought about how much better things were going to be. Sure a few wrenches had been thrown in the motor this summer, but that was inevitable. Himmler, for instance, had become an unexpected burden, but Diana insisted on keeping him. Her kids seemed a little lazier than most kids, but hell, it was summer. His ex-wife Cindy was becoming an increasingly annoying presence despite his winning temporary full custody of Mary. She refused to stop at the house to visit Mary, and she refused to have Diana drop Mary off and supervise the visit. She insisted either he or his mother be present and since he was always working, his mother handled the burden. And the twelve-hour plus shifts were beginning to wear on him, but it was only for another few weeks until Diana got a job.

  Just a few more weeks.

  It wouldn’t be that bad.

  Diana loved him.

  FOUR

  ALLEN STEELE WAS sitting on the sofa in the living room finishing a presentation he was supposed to lead in tomorrow’s meeting, and his wife Dora was down in the basement rec room working out on the treadmill, when he heard the voice.

  He paused from his work. Aside from the faint sound of the treadmill motor purring downstairs, the house was silent. Andy and Jessica were upstairs in bed, and he could have sworn that—

  There it was again.

  The sound was faint, like a whispering. Allen paused, head cocked to one side trying to discern whose voice it was. The kids had gone up to bed two hours ago, and while they sometimes took a while to fall asleep, they rarely woke up. It was possible that one of them was dreaming, talking in their sleep maybe, but—

  A faint scraping sound from one of the upstairs bedroom. Then, giggling.

  A little girl’s giggle.

  Allen smiled, checking his spreadsheet. He was finished for the night. He saved his work, then set the laptop on the end table by his side of the sofa and stood up. He heard the rustling of one of the beds and then the sound of Jessica’s voice, then a second
voice, another little girl’s voice, giggling.

  What the...?

  Allen froze. The whispering continued—clearly two little girls by the sound of it. More rustling on the bed, as if they were settling down, telling each other stories. Allen started up the stairs, wondering how the hell Jessica had let another child into the house without him or Dora knowing about it.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, he paused, listening. The whispering stopped. The upper floor was quiet.

  Beyond the threshold of Andy’s room, which was the first room at the top of the stairs, all was quiet.

  And all was silent from Jessica’s room.

  Allen took a tentative step down the hall.

  He heard Jessica’s voice again, followed by the other little girl’s voice. Both girls giggled. Then Jessica said, “I don’t think my daddy will like that.” The other little girl started talking and Allen stormed into the room, throwing open the door and flipping on the light in one fluid motion.

  Jessica started, jumping up in surprise. She was sitting on the bed, clutching one of her stuffed animals. She looked stunned and a little guilty, as if she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been doing. Allen stepped into the room, his eyes sweeping the space—the walls, the bed and dresser, the toy box. There was nobody else in the room.